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November 20, 2006
Members back Day of Action to protest MNR cuts
Report from Local 638
OPSEU
locals in several locations across the province took
part in workplace activities for the Nov. 16 Day of
Action to protest cuts to the Ministry of Natural
Resources.
Members of Local 638 in Hearst had a “lunch & learn”
session, with 25 members joining in from different
ministries. The goal of the session was to inform
the members of the “Day of Action” to protest
ongoing budget cuts to the MNR. This new initiative
comes from the OPSEU Ministry Enforcement and
Renewal Committee (MERC) for the MNR.
During
the lunch, Local 638 president Lynn Alary talked
about the goal of the Day of Action. Members were
asked to wear black to work, fasten orange flag tape
to their car and truck aerials, and sign petitions
for presentation in the Legislature. We are asking
the members to continue this protest until the
2007-08 provincial budget comes out.
We
need to put the word “resources” back in the
Ministry of Natural Resources. We are operating with
bare bones as far as staff and budget. We are
constantly asked to do more with less and of course,
and not to drop anything.
During
the luncheon, we did some brainstorming with the
members to see what else we could do. We came up
with a couple of initiatives that we will implement
before Xmas. The first one is that we’ve committed
to get 500 names on the petitions by Dec. 25, 2006.
We also decided to create a button for everyone to
wear on Thursdays. Members came up with many
different options of what could be on this button.
We will be finalizing this soon and get the buttons
done locally and distributed to members and
supporters.
Local
638 Vice-President Suzanne Morin put together a
slide show of all the pictures taken during OPSEU
events, the last round of negotiations and the 2002
strike. The slide show was presented to the members
during the lunch. The reason for showing this was to
show the members that we’ve done a lot of work to
get what we have today and we need to continue to
work together to protect our rights.
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